Originally Posted by BR
Beautiful. A miscalibrated screen in Pennsylvania that selects Romney when you click on Obama.

Yeah, your Android products'll do that.

OR

As long as it's happening on both sides, it evens out.

OR

"Believe we can change in."

But seriously, voting machines should be standardized nation-wide. Or at least state-wide. Each of them passing a check when rated against a control machine, and each state's control machine being checked with a federal control.

I mean, this one's in color. Where I voted, I used an old black and white contraption that took longer to load each page on the screen than my frigging eMate 300 takes to render what's on ITS screen! And it wasn't even touchscreen; it had buttons around the edge, and you hit the button closest to your vote choice.

Politicians of one party do not set voting schedules to favor their side and harm the other. Politicians do not move around voting places to gain advantages for themselves or to disadvantage their opponents. In fact, in almost no other country do politicians have any say in the administration of elections at all.

Quote:

Americans worry more about voter fraud than do voters in other countries, because they are the only country without a reliable system of national identification.

In no other country, including federal systems such as Germany, Canada and Australia, does the citizen's opportunity to vote depend on the affluence and competence of his or her local government.

In every other democracy, the vote is the means by which the people choose between the competing political parties -- not one more weapon by which the parties compete.

The United States is an exceptional nation, but it is not always exceptional for good. The American voting system too is an exception: It is the most error-prone, the most susceptible to fraud, the most vulnerable to unfairness and one of the least technologically sophisticated on earth. After the 2000 fiasco, Americans resolved to do better. Isn't it past time to make good on that resolution?

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” -Sagan

I initially selected Obama but Romney was highlighted. I assumed it was being picky so I deselected Romney and tried Obama again, this time more carefully, and still got Romney. Being a software developer, I immediately went into troubleshoot mode. I first thought the calibration was off and tried selecting Jill Stein to actually highlight Obama. Nope. Jill Stein was selected just fine. Next I deselected her and started at the top of Romney's name and started tapping very closely together to find the 'active areas'. From the top of Romney's button down to the bottom of the black checkbox beside Obama's name was all active for Romney. From the bottom of that same checkbox to the bottom of the Obama button (basically a small white sliver) is what let me choose Obama. Stein's button was fine. All other buttons worked fine.

I asked the voters on either side of me if they had any problems and they reported they did not. I then called over a volunteer to have a look at it. She him hawed for a bit then calmly said "It's nothing to worry about, everything will be OK." and went back to what she was doing. I then recorded this video.

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” -Sagan

Court-appointed Republican poll inspectors are being forcibly removed from voting stations in some Philadelphia wards and replaced in some cases by Democratic inspectors and even members of the Black Panthers, according to GOP officials.

Secrets just received this memo from GOP officials:

The Philadelphia GOP is reporting that court appointed Minority (read GOP) Inspectors are being thrown out of polling locations in several Wards.

These Inspectors are election officials - again, court appointed -- and are reportedly being thrown out by the Head Judges of Elections (these Judges are elected Democrats) and being replaced by Democrats.

This has happened at the following locations:

Ward 32, Div 13

Ward 43, Div 14

Ward 56, Div 1

Ward 56, Div 22

Ward 32, Div 28

Ward 32, Div 28

Ward 12, Div 17

Ward 39, Div 1

Ward 24, Div 9

Ward 18, Div 25

Ward 43, Div 14

Ward 29, Div 18

Ward 65, Div 19

Ward 20, Div 1

Ward 6, Div 11

Another official told Secrets: "one of our female inspectors was physically thrown out."

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney decided at the last minute to make stops in Pennsylvania, believing that the race there was close enough that he could win.

The order states: “Individuals outside the polls are prohibited from questioning, obstructing, interrogating or asking about any form of identification and/demanding any form of identification from any prospective voter."

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” -Sagan

Wow. Surprised they aren't or weren't made to cover that up. I believe churches, which are often used for polling places, are required to cover religious symbols or symbols that might influence voters. At least that was my experience the once or twice I voted in a church building. Several of their emblems and posters, etc. were discretely covered. I would think the same should apply here. I know there are definite rules about campaigning within the facility. I believe you aren't even allowed to do things like wear shirts and hats that support your candidate or cause.

The day is far from over. I'm sure we'll hear a lot more, especially as people go to the polls on the way home from work.

I'm sure we will. But, in the end, I'm curious to see how many and how many voters are or were affected. And I'm not talking about having to stand in line for a couple of hours. That borders on whiny. I'm talking about real problems like voters turned away for invalid reasons. Ballot and machine problems that indicate true nefariousness rather than normal "this is the real world and sometimes machines have problems" issues. Like that.

Borders on whiney? It's ridiculous that we don't have the facilities to get people in and out quickly. Long lines at the polls affect the poor disproportionately and are another form of voter suppression. Whiney my ass.

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” -Sagan

Voter irregularities have been reported in Hillsborough County, Florida. Many voters who showed up at their polling places in the county seat Tampa Bay were redirected to another precinct to vote with a provisional ballot, raising questions if their ballots would be counted at all, Barbara Arnwine from the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law said. There were also reports of early morning storms causing power outages in Pinellas County, Florida. Some precincts were left without electricity for up to 45 minutes.

Voting machines/computers, especially those with an internet connection and linked to central tabulators, should be OUTLAWED. If hackers do their stuff just for the hell of it, for *fun*, or just the challenge, ... then it is CERTAIN that when the future of the world's most powerful political office is in the hands of software manufacturers, it follows by default that there will be attempts to rig the election via all manner of software/hardware hacking. Even those with an IQ of room temperature or less can follow that.

Edited by sammi jo - 11/6/12 at 10:44am

"We've never made the case, or argued the case that somehow Osama bin Laden was directly involved in 9/11. That evidence has never been forthcoming". VP Cheney, 3/29/2006. Interview by Tony Snow

Rural and suburban polling stations will have plenty of voting machines, and people will be able to walk in and vote, and leave, with the whole process taking just a few minutes.

In heavily populated URBAN areas, however, there will be just a handful of machines, and many machines that were delivered for election day will be locked up, unused in a storage room protected by armed security guards. This was one of the many subtle methods used to manipulate the vote in Ohio 2004. Watch this movie for the whole story of Ohio 2004.

"We've never made the case, or argued the case that somehow Osama bin Laden was directly involved in 9/11. That evidence has never been forthcoming". VP Cheney, 3/29/2006. Interview by Tony Snow

Part of the issue is confusion, too. My polling place is heavily black and Democratic. Most of poll workers are black. And yet, a black guy in front of me was not only asked for ID, but they had to call and "verify" something with the board of elections. I wasn't even asked for ID. #OKThen.

I can only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow doesn't look good either.

An NBC Bay Area Investigation has uncovered thousands of California voters who remain on the voter rolls despite having died several years ago.

That discovery prompted several state and Bay Area election officials to re-examine their records, after our investigation brought this issue to light.

NBC Bay Area used the Social Security Administration’s Death Master File to cross reference with the California state voter rolls using name, date of birth, and similar zip codes to find matches. We found over 25,000 questionable names still on the state voter rolls.

A closer look at the data revealed that some of the dead people were not only registered, but somehow, even voted, several years after their death. Sometimes, clerks say the mistake can purely be a clerical error, such as a misplaced signature or an outdated registration list that hadn't been purged. Other times, though, the voting turns out to be fraud, clerks say, where family members vote on their dead relatives' behalf.

We need national standards for voting machines and procedures. They should be as tightly monitored as Las Vegas slot machines. We also should not have partisan government officials making any decisions about where, when, and how people can vote. That would perhaps prevent some of the confusion SDW witnessed firsthand.

Also, with regard to the churches, here's the first article I could find about the conservative bias that churches introduce. I can't find the links to the other more rigorous studies, but will try to dig them up. Priming is a very real effect. This is why I agreed that the Obama posters/murals should be covered.

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” -Sagan

Multiple reports of electronic voting machine irregularities have begun to pour in from all over the country as Americans take to the polls today.

Voters in Hamilton County Indianapolis were forced to wait for 30 minutes to begin voting because the machines were not working when the polling station opened.

The AP reports that “cards used to clear tallies from machines before voting begins were improperly programmed,” meaning that around 500 machines had to be “reset”.

The Toledo Blade reports that some 100 voters were unable to cast ballots this morning in Bedford, Ohio, because a voting machine was not working. Officials said that a memory card had to be replaced. Long lines led to people walking away.

In Dubuque, Iowa, more voters were delayed when machines failed to operate for around 45 minutes after the polling station opened.

In Greensboro, “a voter complained that they tried to vote for Mitt Romney three times but that the ballot cast was instead for Barack Obama. Other voters in Guilford County and in some other parts of the state said they experienced similar issues.”

In Milford Township, Pennsylvania, three voting machines stopped working after just one hour of voting. After a technician got them working again, one of them broke down a second time, causing waiting voters to begin discussing their distrust of the machines and the potential for voter fraud.

In Crawford County, problems with machines were also reported. They had not been set to the correct time, so were unable to be used for a short period of time.

In Missouri, the Secretary of State’s office has been forced to respond after numerous voters claimed that machines were flipping votes for Romney to votes for Obama.

In Pittsburgh, voters have reported multiple problems with voting machines.

In Nashville, Tennessee, technical issues with the machines were reported by many voters, while in Chattanooga, machines malfunctioned, meaning some voters had to put their ballots in the machine without them being scanned.

In Fredericksburg, Northern Virginia, hundreds of voters were turned away as all of the electronic voting machines at one polling station failed to operate. Polling workers only had 50 paper ballots available. Worse still, some voters who used the machines were told that their votes would not count if they had placed them before 8am.

Wow. Surprised they aren't or weren't made to cover that up. I believe churches, which are often used for polling places, are required to cover religious symbols or symbols that might influence voters. At least that was my experience the once or twice I voted in a church building. Several of their emblems and posters, etc. were discretely covered. I would think the same should apply here. I know there are definite rules about campaigning within the facility. I believe you aren't even allowed to do things like wear shirts and hats that support your candidate or cause.

Every state is different but my understanding is that individuals that are there to vote can wear what they want.

We need national standards for voting machines and procedures. They should be as tightly monitored as Las Vegas slot machines. We also should not have partisan government officials making any decisions about where, when, and how people can vote.

Yes, we covered this when the Bush vs Gore debacle took place. And after Obama vs. McCain.

The Democratic side was all abuzz about correcting voting injustices then. And then Obama did absolutely nothing.

Talk has been extremely cheap around this issue for the past dozen years.

In the age of social media, why Americans can't build a non-partisan advocacy movement to champion world-class elections?

In Columbus, Ohio, a Tea Party-affiliated group has been banned from observing 30 polling stations in African American neighborhoods. The Colombus Dispatch writes that the group, True the Vote, had falsified their application and was attempting to suppress the Democratic vote. One individual “told the elections board that she attended True the Vote training sessions and the observers were instructed to use cameras to intimidate voters when they enter the polling place, record their names on tablet computers and send them to a central location, and attempt to stop questionably qualified voters before they could get to a voting machine," the daily cites. In Pennsylvania, a judge has ordered two Republican operatives to stop demanding ID from voters outside of a polling station in Allegheny county.

The Florida robocall glitch occurred in Pinellas County, location of St. Petersburg and Tampa Bay. Officials said the calls intended for Monday were wrongly recycled Tuesday, telling possibly thousands of voters they had until “7 p.m. tomorrow” to vote, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

Nancy Whitlock, spokeswoman for the county’s supervisor of elections, said officials immediately stopped the calls Tuesday morning when the problem was discovered and a second message went out telling voters to disregard the previous call.